Iceland's Pirate Party poised to gain at polls today

The hacker-founded Pirate Party, a radical political “Robin Hood” group, is poised to take hold of Iceland’s government as voters head to the polls today.

Votes will be tallied beginning at 4 p.m. ET, but all eyes are on the Nordic nation’s Pirate Party, led by a former WikiLeaks worker that has captured the populist movement sweeping Europe. Iceland's economy collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, and in April the prime minister resigned after being named in the Panama Papers scandal.

"We stand for enacting changes that have to do with reforming the systems, rather than changing minor things that might easily be changed back," said Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 49, the party's leader and self-described "poetician." "We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems. In other words, we consider ourselves hackers."

As attention focused on Jónsdóttir on Saturday, the Iceland Monitor reported she was being followed by more than 40 members of the international media awaiting election results.

The party's headquarters in the capital Reykjavík is in a building appropriately called Tortuga — a reference to the former Caribbean pirate stronghold off the coast of Haiti. The group's official logo is a black Viking sail.

"We want to be the Robin Hood of power: We want to take away the power from the powerful and give it to the general public of Iceland," Jónsdóttir said.

A poll this week by research firm MMR had the ruling center-right Independence Party with a slight lead over the Pirate Party. But an Oct. 19 poll by the University of Iceland put the Pirate Party marginally ahead of the Independence Party, which has been the dominant political force in Iceland for decades.

If the Pirate Party succeeds Saturday, it could form a new coalition government in the country’s parliament — or cooperate with three leftist parties: the Left-Greens, the Social Democrats and the Bright Future Movement.

Katríin Jakobsdóttir, leader of the Left-Green movement, told the Guardian the parties have significant overlap in common issues. The Pirates indicated they would not enter into governments with the two ruling parties; the Independence party or Progressive Party.